


Everyone Has A Price

by RedTeamShark



Series: Los Santos is No Place for the Innocent [4]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Child Abuse, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Sexual Abuse, Los Santos, Prostitution, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/pseuds/RedTeamShark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, everyone can be bought for the right price. If you don’t believe that, you’re a fucking moron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Has A Price

I grew up in the part of town where nice families didn’t drive their cars, and if they absolutely had to pass through, they locked their doors and didn’t look out their windows. Where if you parked by the sidewalk and went inside, you were likely to come back to a smashed window and everything of value missing. The part of town where it wasn’t at all unusual to heard screaming and gunshots in the middle of the night. The police coming around was a pretty average occurrence and I learned early how to tell if they were actually listening or just filling quotas when they asked questions. I learned how to lie to them, too.

It all seemed so normal to me, the guns and the violence, the blood in the streets, the way Mrs. O’Riley in the apartment above us would always have different men coming and going and making the springs on her bed creak while I played with her kids and my mother shouted at us to keep quiet so she could hear the TV (on a good day) or slapped us around for imagined wrongdoings (on a bad day). Some days I’d go upstairs and Mrs. O’Riley would be the one yelling or slapping or ignoring while the springs on my mother’s bed creaked below us. Mom worked and I guess some of the money went to putting food in our kitchen, but I think most of it went to putting drugs into her—anything she could afford and sometimes things she couldn’t.

The days she couldn’t afford her fix aren’t exactly pleasant to remember. The time I complained about not having any milk and she bolted up from the couch, pinned me to the fridge and put her smoldering cigarette butt out on my arm, screaming about how if I wanted things so badly I could go out and work and earn them. Never mind that I was eight years old at the time. She kicked me out of the apartment for the rest of the day and half the night and when I went to Mrs. O’Riley’s to try and get some dinner she shooed me away like a stray dog.

What people never seem to understand is that to me, it was all normal. The lives seen on television were clearly works of fiction, because there the mother’s didn’t inject themselves with dirty needles, or let strange men into their beds. There every family had two parents and all the kids had the same father. That obviously wasn’t what real life was like, I’d had years of observing the world around me to prove it. On TV no one carried a gun and gave you shit if you looked at the wrong part of the street while walking home from the store.

My entire world changed when I was ten.

It started when Mom got a new dealer, a guy with a scruffy face and a lot of tattoos up and down his arms, a guy who refused to take anything but cash for his goods. She always made me leave when he came around, told me not to come back until she came to get me. Looking back I can guess why, and I’ll give my mother credit where she earns it: when she wasn’t strung out on whatever cocktail of drugs was running through her at the given moment, she was a smart woman.

The problem, of course, was that I was ten years old and, in my own mind, exempt from doing what other people told me. I pretty much came and went as I wanted anyways, by that point, so even though she’d told me to leave for the day because she was doing business, I wandered back into the apartment around noon to hunt for some lunch. He was sitting on our couch, kicked back like he owned the place with the television droning before him. When I came in he tilted his head back to look at me, offering a lazy upside down smile. His attention turned back to my mom as she came out of her bedroom, and I still remember every word of the conversation they had while I was making myself a sandwich.

“Didn’t tell me you had a son.” His voice, casual but with an underlying tone of accusation.

“Brat’s not mine.” She was defensive immediately, words hissed out.

“Seems awfully comfortable in your house. And you’re not making a move to chase him away from your kitchen.” It was like he was laughing at her, something I’d never heard before. Even sober, my mother was a force to be reckoned with, and no one laughed at her.

“Whatever, here’s your money, just sell me the goods.” Snappy, that was what her tone was. Like when she burned me with the cigarette for complaining about not having any milk.

“Yeah, no.” The couch squeaked as he stood up, heavy footsteps on the threadbare living room rug. “I don’t sell to people with kids.”

“I’ll find someone else, then.” I had my sandwich by then and was making my way back out the door, but I paused, watching them. She stood tensed in the doorway, lightly scratching the inside of her arm. He stood with his hands in his pockets, slouching lazily and facing away from her.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ll make sure that no one in this city sells to you again. I’m not going to let you put an innocent kid through this, not anymore.”

“He doesn’t mind.” Her eyes snapped to me, almost desperate. “Tell him.”

I looked between my mother and the man, before shrugging and looking away. “Whatever.”

“Maybe we can make an agreement, Mrs. Jones.” There must have been something on the man’s face that I didn’t see, or something that my mother thought she heard in his voice, because her next words hit me harder than a slap to the face.

“You wanna fuck my son? You won’t take trade with me, but a… fuckin’, what’re you now, seven? A seven-year-old boy?” She didn’t sound disgusted, that’s what I remember. She got my age wrong by three years and she didn’t sound disgusted with the idea. Before the man could answer, she continued. “His bedroom’s in the back on the left. Go for it. You be a good boy and do what the nice man says, yeah, son? He’ll give mommy something to make her feel happy when he’s done.”

I was frozen in place, my tongue thick in my mouth like it was made of cotton. I knew she didn’t really care about me anymore, saw me as a nuisance more than anything, but the casual way she offered me up to a complete stranger still chilled me to my core. Before I could move (and to this day I don’t know what I would have done if I’d have been able to—run out the front door or resigned myself to my bedroom and her way of life) there were heavy footsteps on the floor, then the sharp crack of a hand striking flesh.

“If you _ever_ …” His voice was low, dangerous, nothing more than a growl. “ _Ever_ try to offer up a child as your stand-in whore again, I’ll rip the muscles in your legs apart and drop you in the desert for the coyotes to find.” This time his footsteps approached me, a surprisingly gentle hand on my shoulder. His voice was still in that low, dangerous growl when he spoke. “Find another dealer. The kid isn’t coming back to your shithole life.”

“Michael.” I murmured, not quite daring to look up at him. “My name’s Michael. And I’m ten, not seven.”

–

Geoff took me in after that. He set me up with tutors until I was caught up to my age level in school, bought me nice clothes, fed me good meals. I had a bedroom in his apartment… hell, it was like I was his son.

I don’t know why he chose me, I’m sure he came across plenty of other kids in my situation, but it didn’t matter. It still doesn’t matter. He chose me, and in that simple act he probably saved my life a thousand times over. So when I was reaching the end of high school and looking towards the future, I went to him.

By then Geoff was in charge of probably the largest and most powerful crime ring in Los Santos, a force to be reckoned with by police and criminals alike. He had a way of doing things that kept the cops mostly off his case but still scared away potential competition, and he had alliances that kept things running the way he wanted to. By then I had learned far more than school taught me about how to run a city, how to maintain reputation and respect in ever-changing times, how to keep things in order.

I figured that if Geoff wanted anything from me, it’d be to become the leader when he finally stepped down. To take his place, like a prince being gifted the throne by a king or something.

I did not expect to be told to become a cop.

“What?!” I slammed my hands on the table, staring at him in shock.

Geoff rolled his shoulders, waving away my outburst. “You heard me. You asked for my advice after high school, I think you should become a cop.”

“But you hate cops! You’re always talking about how they’re getting in the way and messing up your plans! You were saying just last night that it cost too much to pay them off for what Ryan’s been doing! Why would you want me to fucking become _that_?!”

“Don’t be an idiot, Michael.” The five words were enough to immediately subdue my rage into a low boil of anger, as I finally sat down and crossed my arms. “The cops are always getting in the way and paying them off is too expensive. I need someone on the inside who can do that without absurd and ever-increasing cash incentives.”

The lightbulb clicked on then, and I stared at him. “You want… me… to be your inside man in the cop shop?”

“Wouldn’t trust anyone else with it. So go through it and get a job with the LSPD, if you really want to take my advice. Or don’t, and you can join my ranks.” He paused, smiling. “At the bottom. I’m not going to be accused of nepotism.”

So even though everything I’d ever been around my entire life was the opposite, I went for criminal justice. I went through the police academy, got a job with the LSPD, and got to work for Geoff from the inside. It’s not exactly a terrible position to be in, most of the time. Unlike most of the idiots I work with, I’m generally safe, even from the most hardened criminals that come through. Everyone in the underworld recognizes the ink on my arm as marking me Geoff’s property, putting me under Geoff’s protection.

But that’s not really the brightest part of the job. That’s reserved for that fact that I met my girlfriend through work.

Lindsay is a defense attorney, probably one of the most well-respected ones in the city, and despite what courtroom dramas would lead a person to believe, we get along fairly well outside of court. We have a similar sense of humor, and it wasn’t a big step from chatting after trials to going for coffee together. The next logical move was me asking her out to dinner.

It makes me wonder, though, how she’d react if she learned that the people she’s defending before the judge are the same people that I’m protecting from behind the badge. Would she understand that everyone could be bought, from beat cops being slipped a few bills to look the other way to the head of the police academy letting my forged background pass without a second look? Would she accept the fact that I never had a choice in how my life was going to turn out until Geoff showed up, and because of that I owe him everything? Or would that knowledge scare her away from me, make her realize that I’m just as much of a criminal as the people she defends in court?

It’s probably better not to wonder about it, though. When it happens, it happens, and however she reacts… not like I can change it.


End file.
